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There are more losers than winners in Syria

The battle for Aleppo has the Arab world, Middle
East observers and Western policymakers on edge.
In what is likely a turning point in the long Syrian civil war, a
coalition of opposition fighters is attempting to break Bashar
al-Assad regime’s siege of the country’s commercial capital.

Meanwhile, the Syrian government – with Russian support – is
bombing rebel strongholds in the city which is still home to
250,000 people, according to the BBC.

A
rebel fighter sits with his weapon in the artillery academy of
Aleppo

Thanks to recent U.S. diplomatic overtures to deepen cooperation with Russia against the
Islamic State, or IS, and al-Qaida affiliate Al-Nusra Front, the
U.S. could be considered a partner in those airstrikes. The U.S.
overtures have been criticized as strategically inconsistent and Putin-pleasing.

As a student of American policy in the Middle East, I’d argue
that American efforts are key to the tumultuous trajectory of
Syria’s uprising-turned-war.

What’s less clear to me is how much U.S. President Barack Obama’s
approach prioritizes either the immediate needs of Syrians
suffering from war and terrorism or their aspirations for
self-liberation from authoritarian rule.

ISIS overshadows Syrians

Cynics might consider U.S. policy in Syria apathetic to the
plight and aspirations of the Syrian people.

Even worse, we may be witnessing a microcosm of a teetering world
order in Syria. Longstanding international dynamics have been
upended as the freedom- and dignity-seeking popular uprisings of
the Arab Spring have gone bloodily awry.

Rebel
fighters ride a tank in an artillery academy of
Aleppo

What there is now, in the words of democratization specialists
Thomas Carothers and Oren Samet-Marram, is a new “global marketplace of political change” that
is contested by an array of international actors rather than just
influenced by Western democratic powers. In addition to the U.S.,
Russia, China, Qatar, Iran, IS and Hezbollah are all vying to
shape the politics of transitional countries in the Middle East.
Sometimes their tools are diplomacy; more often, military force
or terrorism.

So whose political interests are winning out in Syria?

More losers than winners

It’s complicated, because so many interests are at play.

Ever since late 2011, months after Assad began violent attacks on his own people, Obama has
pledged to work toward his ouster.

Fighters
of the Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) carry their weapons as they
walk in the western rural area of Manbij, in Aleppo
Governorate

However, Russian’s President Vladimir Putin has long ties to
Assad and has remained loyal to him.
The U.S. and Russia first overcame this difference and agreed to
a “political solution" in Syria after meeting in Geneva in June
2012. In August of that year, Obama declared that any use of
chemical weapons by Assad would be a “red line” that the Americans would not
tolerate.

Then, in August 2013, Assad unleashed a chemical weapons massacre
in the suburbs of Damascus, killing as many as 1,400 of his own citizens.
Obama threatened airstrikes but reversed himself after Russia mediated a deal
that stayed Obama’s hand in return for a promise that Assad would
turn over Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal to be destroyed.

Obama’s vacillating Syria policy has spurred ongoing debate,
especially with regard to fighting IS. The counterterrorism turn,
starting with the anti-IS “Inherent Resolve” campaign in September 2014,
is one way to explain the dissonance in U.S. policy.

People
inspect a site hit by airstrikes in the rebel held town of Atareb
in Aleppo province

The fact is that since fall 2015, Russian military intervention
has bolstered Assad positions on the ground. And Assad’s strength
has strengthened Moscow’s position in negotiations with the U.S.
In parallel, in December of last year, the U.N. moved its focus
from the Geneva mandate to seek a “Syrian-led political
transition” to one focused on stamping out terrorism in the
region through Security Council Resolution 2254.

But Syrians living under aerial bombardment in a half-emptied-out
country don’t have the luxury of the UN and Obama’s extended time
horizon. The president may be able to exercise “strategic patience” through January 2017,
when a new president will occupy the Oval Office, to further test
Russian promises. But each passing day means starvation and
bloodshed for Syrians. Besieged populations suffer in Aleppo as
well as areas such as Damascus suburb Darayya.

The banalization of death intensifies as “international norms” of
warfare are disregarded. The latest testament of ongoing horror
has been Assad regime targeting of six hospitals in Aleppo last week.
The U.S. goal to “degrade and ultimately destroy” IS has taken
precedence over any other imperative. U.S.-Russian bargaining
within the International Syria Support Group, the working group
they cosponsor that seeks diplomatic solution to Syria’s
conflict, centers around the identification of targeted
terrorists as a means to end the war. The new proposal from the
White House, in which the U.S. and Russia will cooperate in
specifically pursuing al-Nusra, is just one more sign of this new
focus.

Uncertain political transition

But a stronger U.S.-Russian partnership is unlikely to achieve
the elusive political solution.
Russia’s unabashed flouting of the February 2016 internationally
agreed “cessation of hostilities” demonstrates these
long odds. And the path toward a ceasefire is made more difficult
by the agreement’s exclusion of ambiguously defined terrorist
groups and territory.

Rebel
fighters take positions at the frontline during what they said
were clashes with Islamic State militants in the town of Marea in
Aleppo's countryside

Russian bombing, combined with Assad strikes, are responsible for
most of more than 5,000
civilian deaths since the cessation of hostilities began,
according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights. The new
Washington-Moscow cooperation is intended, in theory, to clearly
mark out Russian and U.S. targets and therefore avoid civilians
and U.S.-backed “moderate” opposition fighters. In exchange,
Putin is to pressure Assad to abide by U.N. provisions against
bombing civilians.
In the meantime, Al-Nusra has announced that it is splitting from al-Qaida. The effects of this
move are as yet unclear, but the fallout will likely impact both
armed opposition dynamics and U.S. policy.

Ultimately, in my view, the U.S. has made itself complicit in
Russia’s support for Assad. Washington is effectively buttressing
a regime whose repressive crackdown on peaceful protests in 2011
pushed the country into its downward spiral of proxy and regional
warfare.

Obama chides Putin in speeches: “It is time for
Russia to show it is serious” about “reduc[ing] the violence.“ A
military counterterrorism strategy is the key, he said. But in
the same breath, he declared a commitment to working with Russia
on those very goals. Such remarks put nobody at ease except
perhaps Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers.

Rebel
fighters pose for a picture in the artillery academy of Aleppo,
Syria, August 6, 2016.

The apparent skepticism with which Syrians approached peace talks
earlier this year is vindicated. The Syrian High Negotiations
Committee stuck to its minimalist humanitarian conditions. These
included a suspension of barrel bombing, the freeing of political
prisoners and an end to siege-and-starvation tactics. These calls
echoed those by Syrian civil society activists on the eve of
the talks in late January.

Yet these appeals have been repeatedly trampled upon in a
U.S.-blessed process. John Kerry has not, in my view, made a
serious effort to meet the U.N.-sanctioned opposition demands,
based in the “confidence-building measures” agreed upon in
Vienna in the lead-up to Resolution 2254. These attempts to
mitigate Assad’s so-called “starve or kneel” strategy, in which Putin has
become a credentialed associate, are basic requirements
unmet thus far in the ISSG process.

The dramatic suspension of the opposition’s participation
in the peace talks in April was thus no surprise. The latest
U.S.-Russian agreement will not help U.N. Special Envoy Staffan
de Mistura’s attempts to resume negotiations later this month.
An important question must be clearly enunciated. Where is this
U.S.-Russian orchestrated process, claiming to seek an end to
Syria’s war and a political transition, headed?

When the running cost of diplomatic road maps with open-ended
timetables is buckets of blood, the acrobatics of international
statecraft appear unsuited for an explosive region and a
post-colonial order whose unraveling began with cries of “al
sha’b yureed,” or “the people want.”
In my opinion, the U.S.-Russian process promises neither to
substantively address the dire humanitarian situation nor
seriously pursue an end to the war. That a political transition
hammered out among Syria’s “people” can emerge from this
diplomatic deadlock is even less likely. The battle for Aleppo
confirms the primacy of violence over politics in Syria today. No
solutions, diplomatic or otherwise, are in sight. The war rages
on.